Tag: marketing

Well, obviously the answer is none, because mechanics are commonly called “artists”, chefs are called “artists” and the other day, I think it was a politician that a journalist noted is really an “artist” of politics. Anything can be called art until you are the one doing it – then nothing you do can be considered art.

And, never assume that any art or design at all needs to be created for the term “artist” to be bestowed upon someone or something – as long as they are not actually creating art.

It is also, neither the amount of work done, the training to be able to do it well, the efforts for some number of years to market your art and designs, nor the number of years doing it in aggregate.

But it is also not the value nor the quality of the artworks or design either, because right now – it is trendy to have a style that is severely more amateurish than ever before and if you are not producing that – then you are still not “an artist” or a “designer”.

At one time, having a body of work that you have created in art and design was enough to be a calling card that established proficiency and merit at least in claiming the term, artist or designer.

But, now that the internet is so encompassing and the merits of everything so fleeting for the next new thing, that body of work isn’t even required and in fact, may be more of a reason for business backers to not want to invest. It defines nothing of merit that says the skills are there and the works have been done.

Everything is simply about marketing and what the market wants at the moment and whether any of the things you’ve created or designed can fit the trends of today and next week. But, what if you are an American artist and designer with a body of work that proves it to be the case, and have been investing years of study and sacrifice and effort into creating those skills, artworks and designs? Then what?

It might mean something – and there might be a market for it – that is all it means. You still can’t call yourself an artist or a designer unless you are really doing something that has absolutely no relationship to art or the product of art or design – like baking, or being a heating and air conditioning repair person, or a pilot, or a mathematician or only God knows what – or a gardener, or a landscaper (but not a landscape designer, they can’t be called a “designer” in a social context.) It has been bizarre like that for years.

And, people will tell you – just don’t give up, your work is really, really good. And, they’ll say, you just need to sell it and for more people to know about it, but nobody wants to be bothered with seeing it, the excitement of creating it isn’t very exciting to the people who might want to own it and they don’t want to be bothered watching it be created either – especially since it isn’t a funny cat video.

Maybe I just need to do a cat video.

No, I’ve made some cat videos and they were not all that entertaining. Creating art could be more entertaining than the videos I’ve made of it, but it is hard to even want to do that when I already have thousands of artworks I’ve created and designs I’ve made over years and years of creating this body of work – and can’t even realistically call myself an artist because I totally suck at marketing.

And now, people want things that are vastly different with lots of white space, done by somebody in their twenties, not necessarily time consuming or intensely skilled products from it and a style that happens to be trendy at the moment. How do I even tell people about the art I have done or that I could do when there is simply no real way to show it to them or tell them about it where they want to see it and know about it?

I’m sharing this with you to try and help myself think about all of it in more expansive terms rather than as closed off as I feel right now about my work and its opportunities to find the right place in the markets and in the world.

I like it when people buy my work and own it as the special piece in their home or office or vacation house. I like that. If I understood better how to share it with them online and in person – would that be enough for people who might want it and appreciate my art and designs to see them?

One of my little art cards with an ocean painting on it, called Baby Crickets – collectible and each one is a hand painted original work of art. Some of them have been used as designs on my Zazzle store at CricketDiane and Cricket House Studios Art and Design.

cricketdiane, 05-11-2018

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About CricketDiane –

I’ve been creating nearly every day since I was a kid and that is over 50 years. I’ve created in numerous ways in a range that moves from art to problem-solving to inventing, creating music, sculpting and painting to writing and doing various computer / online based projects.

“It is better to make the effort to move forward and release the flow of ideas to work with them and do things creatively, create things and invent and write and make – I definitely know that by experience.” – cricketdiane, 2018